Late last year, I noticed our daughter was starting to get interested in boys. Of course, she did not tell me about it. Pudd’ng uses my phone, and I noticed the sites she would visit, though they were children’s sites, they had something to do with relationships.
When I noticed this, I told myself the best way to have this talk would be to take her out, just the two of us, and have a heart-to-heart conversation. I told myself that I would not use any threats or try to scare the living daylights out of her. I have been procrastinating this conversation but, fortunately, unbeknownst to me, my wife has been on the ball. Tenderoni told me that, when she calls baby girl to the kitchen to pass down some cooking lessons, she also passes down knowledge on such issues as puberty.
For many of us, our parents never took the time to have this big talk with us. Because there was no Internet or even TV and radio programmes that covered such matters, we got the info – which was sometimes erroneous – from our friends, reading those teen mushy novels or dog-eared porn magazines that some of our friends concealed in their schoolbags like it was an outlawed Mwakenya pamphlet.
When our children plead the fifth
I am open with our daughter, and she asks me about anything. (Well, I would love to think that I am free with her). I don’t want her to find about some issues from other people, especially matters to do with sex and sexuality.
In our days, the only TV programmes that had even hints of kissing or getting intimate aired on Fridays and Saturdays. They were the last programmes before KBC television station closed down. I remember waiting for the Bold and the Beautiful and Santa Barbara, after my father had gone to bed. Even then, though the programmes and their plots appear sedate compared to what airs nowadays in broad daylight, I would still get flustered watching the love stories unfold on our black-and-white Great Wall television set.
Nowadays, when watching TV with Pudd’ng and we see certain things – like a gay couple buying a house – there are things she does not say; but I know that she has tons of questions running through her mind. It’s either that, or she already knows about it.
We may think that our children do not know some things, but I have found out that they know and they are just mum about it. Or they are afraid to ask, because they may fear the repercussions. And we may even try to shield them from watching TV, thinking that we are protecting them, but nothing could be further from the truth. If it is out there, they will find out about it, just like we did from friends and those tattered pages of porn magazines.
Pudd’ng is still full of questions. If and when she sees something on TV or on the streets that she does not understand, she will ask about it. And I am usually her go-to guy when she has questions. If Pudd’ng does not say anything, when I think that she should be asking me about it, a little bird will tell me that she is already in the know.
I am still planning that dad-daughter date. Though Tenderoni has already got the head start, I want to also have a say in this matter. In such matters, if a child is blessed to be in a two-parent family, both voices are important.
